TR Foregoes the Shows

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After Taking Its Dealer Showcases on the road for more than five years, Tucker Rocky Distributing this year is instead welcoming dealers to a new showroom at the company's headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Tucker Rocky Showroom will replace the "Tucker Rocky Dealer Expos" in which company reps would travel to different parts of the country to meet and sell to dealers. Rather than continue to bring the show to dealers, says Stephan Ulbrich, Tucker Rocky's director of marketing, the idea is to "bring dealers to the show.

"Some of [the regional shows] have worked really well for us from a selling and profit standpoint. With others, we weren't getting enough value out of them," Ulbrich says. "The plan was to one day have a virtual showroom at the corporate office where we could host dealers and bring them in."

The showroom is modeled after TR's Dealer Expo pavilion; it even uses some of the same slatwall and fixturing. "It's almost like a mini Indy show that's held at Tucker Rocky," Ulbrich says.

The company welcomed more than 200 dealers into its showroom in April, a few days before the Dallas Supercross. The showroom is housed in a a 3,500 sq. ft. space in a warehouse next to TR's corporate offices. The "grand opening" festivities included a catered barbecue dinner, a new apparel fashion show, and entertainment. "We had quite a bit of business," Ulbrich says.

Steve Newsom, owner of Action Kawasaki Suzuki Arctic Cat in Mesquite, Texas, walked through the showroom with a TR sales representative who pointed out products that would be of interest to Newsom's shop. "I was able to see what the merchandise would look like in a store environment," Newsom says. "The display room is a great tool for dealers who could not make the dealer show."

The showroom houses all of the distributor's product segments and includes 60 to 80 vendor and house brands in any given month, according to Ulbrich. The showroom's modular design enables TR to move and refresh products and displays for different selling seasons. In addition, the distributor can custom-tailor the showroom with products for specific dealers who are set to visit.

Tucker Rocky dealers interested in visiting the showroom should schedule an appointment. "We take appointments from dealers and dealer groups nationwide," Ulbrich says. "The appointments are either scheduled through the local Tucker Rocky sales rep or booked directly with corporate sales here in Fort Worth."

Dealers who are on tight schedules can "literally fly in and fly out in a day, and have a complete understanding of the product offerings," Ulbrich says.

For dealers wincing at the idea of incurring travel expenses to Texas, Ulbrich tells Dealernews that Tucker Rocky will partially or fully reimburse a dealer's travel and/or lodging expenses if it meets a minimum-order requirement — the larger the order, the larger the incentive. Incentives vary from dealer to dealer, he adds. "We don't have a structured minimum-order requirement. Instead, we work with individual dealers or dealer groups to understand their needs and build incentives around those needs."